mumbai
30 Nov 2008
After The Siege
Shashi Tharoor writes from India that the biggest threat to Mumbai isn't bullets or bombs but an assault on India's open democracy
There is a savage irony to the fact that the horror in Mumbai began with terrorists docking near the Gateway of India.
The magnificent arch, built in 1911 to welcome the King-Emperor, has ever since stood as a symbol of the openness of the city. Crowds of foreign tourists and local yokels flock around it; merchants hawk their wares; boats bob in the waters, offering cruises out to the open sea. The teeming throngs around it daily reflect India's diversity, with Parsi gentlemen out for their evening constitutionals, Muslim women in burqas taking in the sea air, Goan Catholic waiters enjoying a break from their duties at the stately Taj Mahal Hotel, Hindus from every corner of the country chatting in a multitude of tongues.
Today, ringed by police barricades, the Gateway of India — the gateway to India, and to India's soul — is barred, mute testimony to the latest assault on the country's pluralist democracy.
The terrorists who heaved their bags of weapons up the steps of the wharf to begin their assault on the Taj Hotel, like their cohorts at a dozen other locations around the city, knew exactly what they were doing. Theirs was an attack on India's financial nerve centre and commercial capital, a city emblematic of the country's energetic thrust into the 21st century. They struck at symbols of the prosperity that was making the Indian model so attractive to the globalising world — luxury hotels, a swish café, an apartment house favoured by foreigners.
The terrorists also sought to polarise Indian society by claiming to be acting to redress the grievances, real and imagined, of India's Muslims. And by singling out Britons, Americans and Israelis for special attention, they demonstrated that their brand of Islamist fanaticism is anchored less in the absolutism of pure faith than in the geopolitics of hate.
Today, the platitudes flow like blood. Terrorism is unacceptable; the terrorists are cowards; the world stands united in unreserved condemnation of this latest atrocity. Commentators in America trip over themselves to pronounce this night and day of carnage "India's 9/11". But India has endured many attempted 9/11s, notably a ferocious assault on its national Parliament in December 2001 that nearly led to all-out war against the assailants' presumed sponsors, Pakistan. This year alone, terrorist bombs have taken lives in Jaipur, in Ahmedabad, in Delhi and (in an eerie dress-rehearsal for the effectiveness of synchronicity) several different places on one searing day in the state of Assam.
Jaipur is the lodestar of Indian tourism to Rajasthan; Ahmedabad is the primary city of Gujarat, the state that is a poster child for India's development, with a local GDP growth rate of 14 per cent; Delhi is the nation's political capital and India's window to the world; Assam was logistically convenient for terrorists from across a porous border. Mumbai combined all four elements of its precursors: by attacking it, the terrorists hit India's economy, its tourism, and its internationalism, and they took advantage of the city's openness to the world. A grand slam.
Indians have learned to endure the unspeakable horrors of terrorist violence ever since men in Pakistan concluded it was cheaper and more effective to bleed India to death than to attempt to defeat it in conventional war. Attack after attack has proven to have been financed, equipped and guided from across the border, the most recent being the suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, an action publicly traced by American intelligence to Islamabad's dreaded military special-ops agency, the ISI.
The risible attempt to claim "credit" for the Mumbai killings in the name of the "Deccan Mujahideen" merely confirms that wherever the killers are from, it is not the Deccan. The Deccan lies inland from Mumbai; one does not need to sail the waters of the Arabian Sea to the Gateway of India to get to the city from there. In its meticulous planning, sophisticated coordination and military precision, as well as its choice of targets, the assault on Mumbai bore no trace of what its promoters tried to suggest it was: a spontaneous eruption by angry young Indian Muslims. This horror was not homegrown.
The Islamist extremism nurtured by a succession of military rulers of Pakistan has now come to haunt its well-intentioned but lamentably weak elected civilian government. The bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel proved that Frankenstein's monster is now truly out of that government's control. The militancy once sponsored by its predecessors now threatens to abort Pakistan's sputtering democracy and seeks to engulf India in its flames. There has never been a stronger case for firm and united action by the governments of both India and Pakistan to cauterise the cancer in their midst.
Inevitably, the questions have begun to be asked: "Is it all over for India? Can the country ever recover from this?"
Of course the answers are no and yes, but outsiders cannot be blamed for asking existential questions about a nation that so recently had been seen as poised for take-off. India can recover from the physical assaults against it. It is a land of great resilience that has learned, over arduous millennia, to cope with tragedy. Within 24 hours of an earlier Islamist assault on Mumbai, the Stock Exchange bombing in 1993, Bombay's traders were back on the floor, their burned-out computers forgotten, doing what they used to before technology changed their trading styles. Bombs and bullets alone cannot destroy India, because Indians will pick their way through the rubble and carry on as they have done throughout history.
But what can destroy India is a change in the spirit of its people, away from the pluralism and co-existence that has been our greatest strength. The Prime Minister's call for calm and restraint in the face of this murderous rampage is vital. If these tragic events lead to the demonisation of the Muslims of India, the terrorists will have won.
For India to be India, its gateway — to the multiple Indias within, and the heaving seas without — must always remain open.
This article was first published on The Daily Beast.
For more coverage of the India crisis, see: http://www.thedailybeast.com/big-fat-story/2008-11-27/terror-in-mumbai/ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-28/mumbai-memoir/
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Dr. Shashi Tharoor - "…by singling out Britons, Americans and Israelis for special attention, they demonstrated that their brand of Islamist fanaticism is anchored less in the absolutism of pure faith than in the geopolitics of hate…"
How is this "demonstrated" Dr Tharoor? It is always good practice in events like this to have doubts, since certainty is lacking. Remember the Samjhota Express and the Maligaon incident where Pakistan was erroneously blamed on both occassions?
Another thing, among the targets were also train stations, hotels, restaurants, sites that are places of aggregation for people in transit, be they locals or foreigners. I didn’t really know before this piece by Dr. Shashi Tharoor that the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, headquarters of the Central Railway was Jewish, Israeli, British or even American, and how does one explain the bombing of the Vile Parle railway, which is basically a suburban residential area? Is that all of a sudden a Jewish target too?
The truth is this operation smacks of Mossad, from the involvement of the "peaceful" Chabad Lubavitchers to the improbability of this rabbi’s involvement to the sudden emergence of all the hysterical Islamophobic rubbish in the main stream media.
CBC News said there were reports that some of the militants had stayed at the rabbi’s guest house for up to 15 days before the attacks, when they sneaked in a huge cache of arms and food and the rabbi did not even suspect they were not Jewish? Did not contact the police? Come on Dr Tharoor, get real.
Do you even know who the Chabad Lubavitchers are? - This is simply too convenient an event at too convenient a time for "Western" military planners involved in regional conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan and soon also in Iran - this entire operation does not pass the smell test, and it stinks of Mossad and CIA.
Look at the photos of the "Muslim Terrorists" here:- http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html and look at the photos of the "terrorists" in pic # 5.
See? One of the attackers is wearing a red wrist string, something that is only worn by Kabbalahistic Jews, (like the Chabad Lubavitchers perhaps?) and devout Hindus. With Hindus it symbolizes their goddesss Lashkemi. The string in this photo looks more typical of the knotted hindu wrist string than the Kaballah string.
Now ask yourself this:-
Muslims don’t wear jewellery in general, do they? - Muslim men are forbidden even to wear gold wedding rings. I suppose the attackers could have tried to disguise themselves as devout Hindus, but given you’re on a suicide mission and trying to represent Islamic resistance, would you bother?
I don’t think, between the Zionist disinformation global news empire and the Indian Government running the investigation and looking to neutralise Nuclear rival Pakistan, and with a 13 % Muslim population that are very oppressed as Hindus prosper on USA migrated jobs, that we will ever really get the truth other than the manufactured one.
Ultimately, and this is one for the good Dr Tharoor, is it possible that the fact India/Pakistan and Iran were getting ready to ink a new major natural pipeline deal and grow regionally closer at the same time of this strange occurrence was all a big coincidence? After all how is India going to make war with Pakistan, and be an ally of Israel against Iran when it can get cheaper and better weapons from the Russians and its natural gas from Iran through this new pipeline?
It is just too peculiar how all these strange terror events occur around big oil and gas deals these days isn’t it Doc?
Roxjaw, so the terrorists were Jews pretending to be Hindus knowing the west would suspect Muslims? Right……..
Once again, and still, India seeks to deal with problems by denying reality. This attack was not an attack against Indian democracy but, like 9/11, an attack against State sanctioned terrorism and a denial of freedom. India has as many Muslims as Pakistan and there has been a steady rise in Hindu fundamentalism … Hindoostan for Hindus is the catchcry… and increasing violence toward and discrimination against Muslims.
Add to this the festering sore of Kashmir …. where India plays the role that Israel plays in Palestine and the US plays in Iraq and the international community plays in Afghanistan, and you have a fertile bed for disaffection and revellion.
Add to this the appalling inequalities and hopelessness of life for most Indians where poverty, illiteracy and homelessness are a way of life while the Government spends billions upon billions on military hardware, a space programme for heaven’s sake, and a nuclear weaponry industry and you can see why just some of India’s billion odd people might be ripe for rebellion.
No, one does not condone the violence, ever, but one can understand it in light of the violence done by the Indian Government to Kashmiris in particular and Muslims in general.
It is sheer fantasy to talk about a uninted India. It has never been united. It is in fact a nation which did not exist until the British cobbled it together as part of their empire and then left it as one State, minus the partition of Pakistan. Another totally disasterous action. India was a collection of mini-royal states, more like an Indian ‘Europe,’ it was never one country. Those in the South had different cultural origins and language to those in the North and the miracle is that India has survived for so long. The people of Assam are neither racially nor culturally Indian and yet as part of the old British Empire were bundled in with India. Like Africa, the colonial powers gave no thought to borders, race, culture or religion. The result is chaos.
Read William Dalrymple for greater understanding of India past and present and look to the source of this latest atrocity. You will find its bones in the same place as 9/11- aggression by government, State sanctioned terrorism, meddling foreigners and the arrogance of power.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attack…
Both the source and motivation behind this latest atrocity of terrorism in India Dr Sashi Tharoor is, as you say, is for the Islamist terrorists to divide and close up Indian society - ‘to divide and conquer’ as the old cleche goes.
I am sure they will fail, as they are backward-thinking, ideologues with big ideas of creating a repressive and totalitarian Muslim world, but with no idea where to begin other than with unacceptable violent means.
My hope is that India can rise above this recent tragic loss of life and after the repair of the damaged icons of India, restore their faith and hope in the openness and pluracy of their society.
These terrorists were aiming for the heart and soul of Mumbai, which has been hurt and damaged, but certainly not destroyed.
If the Indians change their behavior because of this attack, then the terrorists make some ground. But if India is strong and more vigilant (apparently there was a warning by some fishermen to the Port Authorities) then these terrorists are dying in vain.
My recommendation is to have some hot pig fat boiling, ready to throw all over any Muslim terrorists and hopefully this will ensure they all end up in hell where they belong. Make sure you smear them all in pork fat, if you can (even after they have died) and make this tactic very public to destroy their religious agression.
And carry and keep pork everywhere, as a deterrent for those violent human beings who are less worthy of life than pigs!
That is really not very kosher now is it Denise? You should wash your mouth out and do tshuva.
Rockjaw - have a bit of sense and catch yourself on.
Denise - what you wrote about pork fat reminded me about an article I read, methinks, towards the end of last year about an Israeli politician in Jerusalem who advocated hanging bagfuls of pork fat on all buses in the city as a deterrent to would-be suicide bombings. His plan didn’t catch on..
Meanwhile, Dr Tharoor’s vision of India smacks of the old rose-tinted glasses approach. What he also didn’t mention was the constantly continuing discrimination of the caste system, particularly against the untouchables.
He mentioned that a "change in the spirit of the people" would destroy India. In this case, it would help the untouchables no end.